Consubstantial mysteries of the unitary executive

A book that exists

I myself remain an Arian heretic in the matter of the president suing his own agency, insisting that if the president orders one part of the executive branch to “settle a dispute” with him, while using tax dollars to do so, this is simply a straightforward theft of public money:

President Donald Trump is expected to drop his $10 billion lawsuit against the Internal Revenue Service in exchange for the creation of a $1.7 billion fund to compensate allies who claim they were wrongfully targeted by the Biden administration, sources familiar with the matter told ABC News.  

The commission overseeing the compensation fund would have the total authority to hand out approximately $1.7 billion in taxpayer funds to settle claims brought by anyone who alleges they were harmed by the Biden administration’s “weaponization” of the legal system, including the nearly 1,600 individuals charged in connection with the Jan. 6 Capitol attack as well as potentially entities associated with President Trump himself.  . .

In addition to a public apology from the IRS, the compensation fund is believed to be the main condition for Trump to drop a series of legal actions he filed against the federal government, including the $10 billion lawsuit related to the 2019 leak of his tax returns as well as $230 million in legal claims related to the 2022 search of his Mar-a-Lago estate and the Russia collusion investigation he faced during his first term in office, sources familiar with the ongoing deliberations said. 

The settlement terms are expected to prohibit Trump from directly receiving payments related to those three legal claims; however, entities associated with Trump are not explicitly barred from filing additional claims, sources said. 

This spares Mike Johnson the inconvenience of being distracted from his porn surfing for long enough to pass the Multi-Billion Dollar Payoffs to the President’s “Friends” (and Trump-related Entities) Act of 2026.

The silver lining here is that, with all of the president’s potential litigation with the IRS definitively settled, he will now be free to release all his tax returns, said the new-born fawn, as it blinked in the sunlight and took its first halting steps on wobbly legs.

Months later, when the council of Pergamum convened, the theologian entrusted with impugning the Monotones′ errors was (predictably) John of Pannonia; his learned and measured refutation was sufficient to have Euphorbus the heresiarch condemned to the stake. “This has happened and will happen again,” said Euphorbus. “You are not lighting a pyre, you are lighting a labyrinth of flames. If all the fires I have been were gathered together here, they would not fit on earth and the angels would be blinded. I have said this many times.” Then he cried out, because the flames had reached him.

Jorge Luis Borges, “The Theologians”